PRIDE POWER: Shaquille Stokes, a former Lincoln High School star , led Hofstra to a 3-0 mark at the 2K Sports Classic subregional last weekend. Photo:

HOUSTON — First, the good news: it is unlikely the Knicks are going to spend any time wringing their hands that Jeremy Lin plies his trade for the Rockets. That applies to all but the most ardent disciples of Linsanity among the fan base, too.

The bad?

How much time do we have?

“Unacceptable,” Mike Woodson said. “Awful. Just awful.”

OK, look: in the course of the long season, you will have nights like the Knicks had last night at Toyota Center, a 131-103 thrashing that was every bit the bloodletting that the arithmetic suggests. The sainted 1970 Knicks were blown out more than once. So were the ’96 Bulls. As addictive as winning might’ve been across the season’s first nine games, it is always a fleeting high.

Losses happen. Bad losses. Blowout losses.

Still: there was something about this night, this game, this showing. It wasn’t just the defense, which allowed those 131 points, which is only 13 fewer than the high-water mark of the Mike D’Antoni pop-a-shot era (144, at Golden State, Feb. 10, 2009), which allowed a Florida kid named Chandler Parsons to channel Dirk Nowitzki and James Harden to channel James Harden. It was more than the offense, which spent a night regressing as Carmelo Anthony pondered making a run at Jack Taylor’s numbers.

And, yes: it was more than Lin, who played fine (13 points, seven rebounds, three assists), who was outplayed by Raymond Felton (17 points, eight assists), who lost a part of his front tooth during the game and exchanged pleasantries with Anthony after it.

“We weren’t focusing on Lin,” Jason Kidd said. “We were focusing on the two guys who destroyed us [Parsons and Harden combined for 64 points] and didn’t focus on them enough, obviously.”

So the Knicks have their first losing streak of the season, face their first crossroads. When they looked like they were about to run away with the Dallas game the other night, and again when they tried to steal it at the end, perhaps you allowed your imagination to run free a little bit. They had played so well for so long.

Then, a stretch of five straight quarters of 30-plus points allowed.

Then, a loss in Dallas, another one here, to a Rockets team that had struggled defending its home court. Then … well, what was the word Woodson used? Unacceptable?

“We’ve been trying to outscore teams,” the coach would say. “And that’s not good enough.”

Not against the Rockets, not against most teams in the NBA, not when Woodson has made it a bedrock policy to preach defense, not when the hallmark of the Knicks’ first nine games was high-IQ basketball that awakened some pretty fond memories of some pretty beloved teams.

Lin? It was clear he wanted to make a statement, clear he was grateful a slump that has seized him for most of the season’s first month didn’t hamper his new team against his old one. Even Lin seems resigned to the fact the two weeks that established him as a zeitgeist-level athlete were an aberration.

“That was a great time,” he said, “but what I want to be is consistent.”

The Knicks have moved on, have given the ball to Felton and to Kidd, have mostly seen their plans justified. We saw how fragile it really is for them these past few games, how much the delicate balance was altered when Rasheed Wallace was forced to sit yesterday, how useful Iman Shumpert will be when he returns as a way to stifle a Harden or a Parsons (or an O.J. Mayo or a Vince Carter).

Hell, last night? Last night you could actually feel how much the Knicks miss Amar’e Stoudemire, even if that’s a subject nobody seems terribly eager to discuss.

Interesting night. The Knicks knew Lin would be waiting for them, knew firsthand his knack for seizing moments, survived this first reunion just fine, and would have been delighted if that was the one issue they take home with them. Instead, they have several more. Long season. Hard season. You become winners dealing with success. You become something else if you can deal with your shortcomings.